IT WAS DUMB, BUT JACK STILL went.
Another three weeks would pass before he was released from Greendale; and he had circled the day in red on his calendar. But on occasion an aide would take him for a field trip to a local park or mall where he could exercise his legs. Of course, the aide was always at his side with a medical kit—the football, as Jack called it.
But that Friday morning, Jack convinced the aide, Andre LeVal, to swing by his old place in Carleton where he and Beth used to live. He also convinced Andre to let him stroll up Hutchinson Road by himself while Andre kept an eye on him from his parked car. Andre saw no problem and let Jack out.
It had been a long time.
Jack made his way with the cane, moving along as if he were crossing a minefield, taking little mincing steps not because of his legs but because if he didn’t sneak up on the place it might come at him too hard. So he stopped across the street, under the maple in front of the Helms’s place. Tom and Marilyn both worked, so they wouldn’t catch him, come out, and ask him in for coffee and a good cry.
He looked at the house and waited for a reaction. But there was none, probably because the anticipation had all but anesthetized him.
The place looked the same—white colonial, green shutters, sloping lawn, low stone wall, azaleas and boxwood bushes that he had planted. The paint looked brighter than he remembered. The flower garden was still there, blazing with daffodils. Beth had sent away for hundreds of bulbs one year, and for several hours they planted them all, getting goofy on the dirt and sweat.
Jack thought about crossing the street, but there was no sidewalk, which did not make for casual strolling, especially with a cane. So he stood under the tree, hoping no cars would come by and wonder if he was some kind of stalker.
You don’t live here anymore, Jackie Boy. That was pre-coma you.
He moved down the street.
Why are you doing this, asshole? The last thing you need is a good-old-days fix. Only going to make you more miserable.
Niggling thoughts, and he shook them away.
Just this once.
Bullshit
.
Jack’s mind was a fugue. He had not been here in months, and this was coming to terms with that. Reality test, turning point, sayonara—your basic parting shot.
The lawn was a brilliant green, looking better than he remembered it. But it always did look greener in April before summer turned it New England brown. The house looked the same, but the setting looked reshuffled. At the top of the lawn sat the pink dogwood he had planted the spring they moved in. It had been pruned, and the shrubs looked taller—or maybe it was his imagination. At the side of the house was a child’s riding toy fashioned after a train engine. A kid or kids lived there now. He and Beth had wanted to fill the place with babies—three or four of them. Whatever, somebody else’s tree, somebody else’s shrubs. Somebody else’s kids.
Jack felt disoriented from the double vision. To a major portion of his brain, this was his house. He and Beth had lived there just a few weeks ago. Now people with unknown names filled the rooms with their voices, there furniture, their kids, their own
I-wish-I may-I-wish-I-mights.
Different voices hummed the walls, warmed the bed. Same stage, different cast.
Suddenly a fierce sadness sliced through him like a sickle. This was what grief was like—grief for the loss of it all: for his Beth, his world, the old Jack. Sure, he was alive, but was that really better than the alternative?
Shit!
Just what he didn’t want was to get locked into yearning for what no longer was. He needed to rise above the swirling muck of anger and self-pity. This wasn’t a matter of getting on with his life since there was no life to get on with. It was a matter of your basic makeover. Renewal. Renascence: Jack Koryan II.
About the past and that place across the street, he just wanted to forget. But, man, it was hard, and there were times like this when he envied the Greendale old guys their forgetting. He’d kill to go blank, erase the palimpsest of his old soul and get an all-new impression.
He started up the street and glanced at the house again …
One big fucking mistake, pal! Go back to Andre and get out of here.
And he was hit with a recollection so vivid that for a moment he nearly lost his balance.
It was November: He was standing high on a ladder cleaning the gutters. Beth appeared in the bedroom window right next to where he was scooping out the leaf mash. She had just gotten out of the shower and was toweling off
when she spotted him and tapped the window. He peered within to see her flash him a full Monty, a sly cartoon grin on her face. “Hey, Ladderman, want to climb this?” He made a huge stupid face. “Uh, climb what, ma’am?” She closed the towel across herself and opened it again in an exaggerated stripper flash and jiggled her breasts at him. “This, nitwit.” “Ah just do gutters.” She rolled her eyes. “Well, have I got a gutter for you!” she said, and snapped her pelvis at him. “Oh, okay, if you say so,” and he gave her a look of moronic complicity. Beth cracked up, and Jack was down the ladder in a wink and up the stairs and into the bedroom before she could settle in their bed. “Shower first,” she said. And he did. And they did. And it was wonderful.
He headed back down the street toward Andre’s Toyota, repeating just what a bad idea this was. He should have just gone to the North Shore Mall instead. Andre was reading a newspaper.
Jack got in the car. “Okay, let’s go.”
“Nobody home?”
“Nobody home.”
As Andre pulled away, Jack felt the tug of the house at number 12 for one last little peek—for auld lang syne. He glanced through the window, gazing at the house through a mist, too distracted by the receding visions to notice the black SUV following them.
PETER HABIB TURNED HIS BRIGHT RED Harley onto Ocean Drive and cranked the throttle. At one in the morning there were no other vehicles on the road.
Peter did this whenever he couldn’t sleep. Instead of tossing around in his sheets, he’d take his candy-apple-and-chrome stallion for a spin.
And this was one of those glorious early spring nights when the sea air was laced with sultry hints of summer yet still cool and moist and requiring a leather jacket.
He loved this drive because there were several strips where the houses and trees gave way to open vistas of beach. His favorite was a straightaway strip for about a mile with no obstacles between him and the ocean save for a concrete breakwater barrier erected a few nor’easters back.
Rising among scraps of clouds was a three-quarter tangerine moon that blazed across the black expanse of water and set the sky in motion. It was one of those nights when Peter felt privileged to be alive.
He whipped along the winding course of Ocean Drive, feeling that he could do this all night long, except that the Massachusetts coastline would not allow endless oceanside cruising. Maybe after the trials were over, he’d head for California—growl up the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles up through Big Sur. And why not? He could afford an early retirement. And his wife wouldn’t mind if he and one of his biker friends did a guy thing. Might even take the hogs across country. The other option was flying out and renting bikes in L.A. Or buy them and have them shipped back. Whatever. He was making great money.
Ahead the road opened up to the straightaway, and his heart throttled up.
Amazing. Not another car on the road, and there was the endless Atlantic and that splendid moon you could almost pick out of the sky with your fingers.
Peter pushed the bike to about forty. He liked the way the roar of his engine echoed off the barrier as he whipped through the scene, the moon to his right over the water. He throttled up.
But it wasn’t the only light. Out of his left eye he saw something in his mirror. The moon. But reflecting off something else.
He checked his right mirror, but it happened all so fast that he did not process that a large black vehicle had closed in behind him. Or that its headlights were off. Or that it had come up on him at full speed, the only indication being the moon glancing off its windshield in his mirrors.
Peter also did not have time to process how the driver of the vehicle could have missed the bright taillights of his Harley. All he knew was that the large dark mass suddenly closed on his left flank pressing him into the strip of barriers.
By reflex, Peter braked. And the moment exploded into a void.
“HE DIED INSTANTLY,” NICK SAID.
“That’s terrible.” René had met the man only a few times, but she felt as if she had lost an old ally. And Nick was devastated.
“The police say that he lost control of the bike and hit a concrete breakwater.”
“He was such a nice man.”
“And a first-rate clinician. It’s a real loss.” He was also the one vocal ally Nick had in his effort to postpone the FDA application of Memorine.
According to Nick, Peter had been cremated and a memorial service would be held in a few weeks.
They were walking on a trail through conservation land about two miles off the South Border Road exit of Route 93. It was where Nick would hike to get in shape for the Utah trip in June. Most of the trails were through tall oaks, although the land climbed to huge glacial outcroppings of granite from the top of which one could see the skyline of Boston.
They continued in silence for several minutes. The cool breeze felt good, a relief from the confines of nursing homes and an opportunity to deal with their sadness. In a couple of hours they had to be back at Broadview to consult with the Martinetti women. Louis was protesting that he wanted to go home.
“The other news is that GEM’s decided to hire an independent clinical research organization to go through all the data and come up with recommendations.”
“To what end?”
“GEM’s mandated to explain any problems with the trials to the FDA, so they’ll try to determine if the flashbacks are the result of the drug or the disease. It’s what Peter was pressing for.”
“But we can tell them that.”
“Except they don’t want to hear our argument.”
“I thought once the Zuchowsky affair was resolved, they’d stop putting their heads in the sand.”
“The Zuchowsky affair cost them a million dollars. This could cost them five hundred times that.”
Nick had been working out here and on a home treadmill, so he cut up the trail like a mountain goat, René right behind him. “Any idea which CRO?”
“No. Some gerontology specialists.”
“And what about flashback cases?”
“We continue fine-tuning dosages and noting behavior changes. Any problems we continue to treat with antiseizure drugs, antipsychotics, sedatives.”
Two other clinical PIs had bowed out of the trials in disagreement with GEM Tech’s pressure tactics and had been replaced by GEM-approved physicians. And now Peter Habib was dead. “Are we the only ones who think they’re rushing a faulty drug to market?”
“I think Brian Rich and Paul Nadeau agree, and possibly Jordan Carr. He may be coming around. Unfortunately, that’s up against a powerful flood of appeals by AD groups to get it to market by Christmas, no matter what.”
“But a CRO review could take months.”
“If pushed, they could review the data in a week. They’ve also got to have it done for Utah. That’s seven weeks from now.”
“So there’s a deadline.”
“Absolutely. Meanwhile, we box up all case report forms, records, whatever, including all files on CDs, and continue the trials.”
They came to a clearing and climbed the granite boulders to the top, where they had a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. Nick sat down on a rock and took a deep breath.
“You okay?”
He smiled and let out his breath. “Just a little dizzy.”
René handed him a water bottle from her day pack. “How long have you been having these spells?”
“Since I’ve been thirty pounds overweight.” He guzzled some water and stood up. “I’m fine.”
Toward the east the skyline of Boston shimmered in the milky blue mist. Nick took his camera out of his backpack and snapped off a few shots—of the local rocks, the Boston skyline, and René.
“The Utah conference is just an hour’s drive from Bryce Canyon. Imagine the views.”
“I take it the FDA knows nothing about these flashback problems.”
“Not officially, even though that was what Peter was pushing for,” Nick
said. He snapped another two shots. “Nor will they unless that’s in the report by the CRO.”
“And if the CRO concludes that the problem is drug-related?”
Nick shrugged. “Then we go back to the drawing boards—determine where the problem is—dosages, interactions with other medications or other diseases, population demographics—whatever it takes. We’ve done nothing about determining a correlation. Maybe Italian Americans or Eastern European Jews are susceptible to such seizures. Or people with a particular genetic signature. Or those patients with high blood pressure. We just don’t know why some have flashbacks and others don’t, but we’d better determine that before the stuff hits the market.”
“And if this CRO concludes that the flashbacks are not drug related?”
“It goes to market.”
What bothered René was how GEM Tech reps were categorically dismissing the flashbacks as anomalies unrelated to the drug. Even Mary Curley’s death was ruled an unintentional suicide as the result of advanced dementia. The same with a man from Connecticut named Rodney Blake who had cut off his own genitals.
“Meanwhile, we continue feeding hope to victims and caregivers.”
“And isn’t that a shame.”